I built a website for a nonprofit: TreeWater Initiative⌗

The Backstory⌗

For a little over 3 years now I have been (really enjoying!) learning Arabic. More coming on that in a new post, but for now I’d like to share a project that endeavor has led me to.

A year ago I was browsing /r/learnarabic a came across a post from someone here in the US promoting arabic conversation practice with a friend of his, a native speaker from the West Bank, Palestine. I had already been wanting to try one of the language exchange platforms I found online, but I thought this sounded like a great opportunity and would help out this person in need and he’d get to keep all of the money without a middleman taking their cut.

After taking lesson for a month I became close friends with the person. He told me about another close friend of his, a woman from the US named Jeannie. They met several years prior while she was visiting Palestine.

Jeannie returned to visit at least once or twice a year for the next 6 or so years, because she had started a nonprofit called the TreeWater Initiative.

Fast forward to earlier in 2025, our mutual friend connected us because he knew I worked with computers and she needed a website for her organization.

Today, I am excited to share the website we recently launched, coinciding with the publication of a book she co-wrote with a young woman from Gaza.

The Organization⌗

Mission Statement:

The TreeWater Initiative provides programs and opportunities for individuals in service to the communities and countries in which they live and work. We empower individuals through economic, environmental, cultural, and educational initiatives to build financial resources, environmental stewardship, and broad cultural relationships and understanding.

For the first several years of their existance, TreeWater was focused on environmental and economic development projects like planting trees and opening greenhouses for communities in Gaza and the West Bank.

Since the tragedies on and after October 7, 2023, that kind of work has very unfortunately not been possible.

On a trip to Gaza, Jeannie had met a young woman named Amira. After October 7 they began a text message exchange that formed the basis of a book they would go on to write together based on the non-stop horror and devastation Amira and the other civilians of Gaza have lived through.

This book is not a political statement. It is an intimate look at what, in the age of AI becoming accessible to the masses, might be considered an unimaginable daily battle for survival by an entire ethnic group if it weren’t happening in plain sight for the rest of the world to see.

So for now, they are focused on spreading awareness by sharing Amira’s story through their recently published book, I Am No Longer Afraid To Die: Witness Gaza.

The Project⌗

This was a pretty straightforward and basic project, and that made it a real joy to build! No need to match pixel perfect designs from Figma, no need to overthink project structure, and no need to worry about infrastructure as I knew it would be a small static site for now. It was one of those projects that’s great for riding a few great waves of flow. 🌊

I was able to find a previous version of her site on archive.org so that really helped speed up the process. I pulled all the copy and images from there, and repackaged them with my own design and a reorganization of the content.

The Details⌗

The tech stack I chose includes:

• Next.js/React
• Typescript
• TailwindCSS
• AWS Amplify

I knew we wouldn’t need any dynamic functionality for now, but will at some point in the future. So Next.js made sense because it’s great for building small, static sites very quickly, and I can utilize the Node backend to connect it to something like Contently for easy content management when we’re ready for that.

I already use AWS Amplify to host this blog, and I like how easy it is to set up and CI/CD “just works”, so it was an easy choice to stick with that for now as well. Not to mention the amount of traffic I’m anticipating for quite some time will cost nothing more than pennies to a few bucks a month.

I’m not a designer, but design was one of the things that first got me excited about web development all the way back in the dialup days. I really enjoy the mix of art and science that my day job as a software engineer doesn’t often allow for.

I spent years developing digital marketing skills as well, so this was an all around fun project to work on because I got to put my (very basic) design skills to work, I put my marketer hat on and thought through every detail to ensure the content and pages flowed seamlessly from start to finish, and I got to hack on a fun hobby project for a good cause I’m proud to support.

The End⌗

During this process I learned that Roland, the person whose reddit post I responded to last summer is actually Jeannie’s son and also a leader of TreeWater.

Little did I know 3 years ago when I first downloaded Duolingo that my interest in learning Arabic would lead me to new friends near and far, and volunteer work that turned out to be a fun little side project.

I invite you to check out the site: treewaterinitiative.org.

Thank you for reading! ❤️ 🍉